March 10, 2018

Subscribe

Microsoft Pix can add business card info to your contacts

by John_A

Microsoft’s AI-powered camera app Pix just got a new feature. Now you can use it to upload all of the information on a business card into your iPhone Contacts as well as check out the person’s LinkedIn account. All you have to do is open Pix and point your phone’s camera at the business card. Pix will automatically recognize that it’s a business card and ask you if you want to take action. If you do, you then have the option to add the information on the card to your contacts and find the person on LinkedIn. If you’re signed into the LinkedIn app, tapping the “Find on LinkedIn” button will take you to their profile, where you can then add them to your connections.

Last year, Microsoft introduced new Pix features that optimized camera settings for pictures taken of whiteboards, documents and business cards. And Microsoft has been integrating LinkedIn into its other products since purchasing the company in 2016. In October, Microsoft integrated LinkedIn with Outlook.com, bringing your contacts’ LinkedIn profile information into your inbox, and last month, the company released its LinkedIn-powered Resume Assistant for Office 365 subscribers.

“Pix is powered by AI to streamline and enhance the experience of taking a picture with a series of intelligent actions: recognizing the subject of a photo, inferring users’ intent and capturing the best quality picture,” Josh Weisberg, a Microsoft Research principal program manager, said in a statement. “It’s the combination of both understanding and intelligently acting on a users’ intent that sets Pix apart. Today’s update works with LinkedIn to add yet another intelligent dimension to Pix’s capabilities.”